2010 football

While not technically a diary, in the sense most diaries on the site are anyway, I’m giving thought to starting a “video diary” of sorts, with fun mash-up projects and such, over the course of the season. I’ll prepare the video and give explanations of what I was thinking when I put it together. I’m not sure what I’m going to do or use, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something. If you have any suggestions, or ideas, feel free to post them in the comments. Now, without further ado … onto the entry:

After all the positive feedback from the “Ohio State Inception” Mashup, I felt that I needed to do something bigger for my next video. This logically led to one conclusion – a hype video.

Now, my opinion of what a hype video should be may differ slightly from others, particularly the “Better Son, Better Daughter” videos (which I LOVED, don’t get me wrong), but I think a hype video should be so incredibly grand and awe-inspiring that you have nothing but goosebumps at the end. In that vein, I was watching a particularly grand and epic blockbuster the other day, and I heard a speech that has from the time I heard it, been a particular favorite of mine … and it all just clicked together.

I won’t spoil it for you, and I’ll stop boring you with words and just say …

Initially, just FYI - I wouldn’t expect this kind of quick turn-around from me between videos in the future. I’ve been home-sick with the flu all week, and this was an outlet for my boredom. All in-all, this took about 20+ hours to put together, though at least 6-7 of that was downloading videos.

Also, as I’m all for giving credit where credit is due, many thanks to Brian, shortsgoblue, and all those who’ve contributed to the original hype videos that came before this one. They certainly served as the genesis for my own contribution and mine certainly wouldn’t have come about without them. Additionally, kudos to everyone on YouTube who has so meticulously catalogued Michigan football highlights, specifically WolverinesHistorian and parkinggod, as well as all of those people who put together hype videos of their own, as clips were borrowed from a great many sources. The nature of such a project as this is collaborative by default, given the limited material we all have to work with, so I do appreciate the efforts of others on their own videos.

The speech, if you didn't know, is from "Armageddon" by none-other-than Mr. Michael Bay. It's the speech the president gives before the astronauts blast off to go fight the asteroid. The clip can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_sUlupV48I

Now, a word about the music, as this is always the key subject matter for discussion aside from the actual video itself. As I said above, I wanted grandeur and spectacle for my hype video, hence the “over-the-top” anthem I chose from 30 Seconds to Mars. I love the grandiose-nature of their music (having used it for my “Movies in Action 2011” Mashup I posted a month or so ago), and I felt that it fit very well with the video I was trying to make. Also, if you’ll go and read the lyrics (http://www.lyricskid.com/lyrics/30-seconds-to-mars-lyrics/vox-populi-lyrics.html) I think you’ll find they fit this season better than you’d think.

I tried to make a video equivalent to what I think this season represents – namely reclamation of things we’ve forgotten these past few years and an attempt to recapture an old identity. This is why there are so many references to the past tied into the video itself. I wasn’t a RichRod basher or anything like that, and I’m all for more creative offenses, but there’s something inexplicably comforting about a return to past glory and having someone in place who we all know respects that past as if it was his own blood. That’s why this video had to be so epic, because I just can’t escape that feeling that something epic is just around the corner.

Until then … hopefully this video keeps a sense of “epic” alive over the summer months, a summer when recruiting has abnormally slowed to a crawl, and we’re all on the edge of our seats counting down the days until the season kicks off. Hope everyone enjoyed the video.

Cheers.

EDIT: Also, just FYI, a poster below made this point and I wanted to make sure I wasn't making myself "look to good" by taking credit for someone's work, but the "over laid" visual effects, like Denard's running highlights on a stadium wall, old fans in a new stadium, and the old players over the new block M, those were all from an ESPN special and an award winning student-produced film on Michigan football called "Michigan Stadium - A Timeless Tradition" respectively that were used in another 2011 hype video. I didn't do those myself, unfortunately.

Now that we're seriously into the season, I thought it might be time to see how we're doing as compared to last year. Some people around here like tables (called "charts"), but methinks charts are hard to read. In fact, that's why last year I started plotting the Hennegraphs and other related graphical views of data B. Cook has put together.

The Graph

And hence, a graph of some key offensive statistics across the first ten games of the year, for both 2009 and 2010:

The graph plots a number of statistics across each game of the season. On the left are all the number for 2009, and on the right the numbers for 2010. The bottom-most graph shows points scored in each game; the next graph up shows point differential (how many points we scored minus how many points the opposition scored); a similar set of graphs for how many yards our offense accumulated and yard differential (yards gained minus yards given up) are shown above those.

I also took some liberty of moving the 2009 Delaware St. game to before the Big Ten Season so that the comparable games are in the same part of the season.

Analysis

These graphs I believe allow one to make a few observations about how much the team has progressed since last season. And so I do:

In 2009, we were outgained in yardage, often significantly, in virtually every game against serious competition (the Big Ten team and Notre Dame). I think it is reasonable to make the case, and the record indeed shows, that we were just a bad Big Ten team.

In 2010, there is only one game like this: the MSU game. We have thus made a jump, at least to the middle of the pack, and possible higher (which the next two weeks will play a significant role in determining).

In 2009, a number of Big Ten games were quite close despite the yardage differentials. Is this a testimony to the fact that the team is actually pretty tough mentally, never quitting in games even though they were getting pushed around? It is pretty amazing how close the team was to having a pretty good seasonin 2009.

In 2010, in many ways our record is worse than our yardage numbers. This has a lot to do with turnovers undoubtedly, and is a great sign for the 2011 season.

Your observations go here.

A lot of this is well known and obvious for those who follow the team (i.e. mgoblog fanatics like myself), but I thought the visualization was a nice way to see the differences between 2009 and 2010. Certainly, it can be shown to any idiot who claims we haven't made much progress.

Enjoy! And please do suggest other items to include on said graphs; it is not hard to scrape the data from the espn box scores.

Having lived outside Michigan and now being back in Michigan, I couldn't agree more. Some of us in state Michigan fans have a skewed perspective.

A few highlights:

If you're a Michigan fan living in state, you probably think this is a must-win game. Having lost two straight year to the Spartans, a third loss would signal an irrevocable shift in momentum. MSU would take its place as the state's dominant program, recruiting will follow, and Michigan will be plunged into a Dark Age.

You'd be wrong.

On the story vs. fact ...

Dantonio has positioned his team as the embodiment of the old Michigan virtues that have supposedly fallen by the wayside under Rodriguez: toughness, discipline, Midwestern values. That in actual fact Rodriguez has run a tight ship, and Dantonio a halfway house disguised as a football program, has not blunted the force of this message. Stories are more powerful than facts.

As many of you know, MSU's defense is pretty ordinary. I know someone here recently compared the UConn and ND defenses as pretty similar (once their numbers are adjusted for Michigan's top level O).

Specifically, MSU has had a pretty bad pass D (sound familiar?). I believe they were rated around the same place as UM's pass defense prior to last weekend's games. Then, Michigan ran into an accurate 5th year QB who threw 64 times....and Sparty ran into an off-day by Tolzien on a run-frist team.

Otherwise, Sparty has a similarly bad pass D, but they look better on paper now because of mistakes by Tolzien and dropped passes. And it wasn't MSU's strong rush either. MSU did not put great pressure on the QB. I think they had one sack and a couple of hurries (worse tham UM).

They basically looked like a Michigan D. They allowed Tolzien to throw and let him try to be mistake-free and he wasn't. We allowed Chappel to throw and he was accurate (and threw a lot more).

Is it a low-risk or high-risk strategy? I don't know. But, it can work I guess....

So, I was digging around in the Sagarin rankings because I was impressed with the UMASS win over William & Mary two weeks ago. According to Sagarin, the UMASS (69) game will be more difficult than the following:

Bowling Green (108)

Indiana (91)

Purdue (89)

Connecticut (80)

and Minnesota (105) if they actually played

While I do think Michigan has a right to be confident in playing a FCS team, I do not think this team should be taken that lightly. The CAA tends to be successful against FBS teams, and I would be willing to put their teams up against MAC and Sun Belt teams any day of the week.